You make six trips and bid temp power at month zero
Electrical returns to the same building four to six times, and the rough in sits exposed between trips. Temp power gets bid as one lump sum before anyone knows the duration.
Electrical is the only trade that installs a system for the entire site at month zero and then maintains it for everybody else at no additional charge for the full duration, on a lump sum priced before the schedule existed. Two guys changing lamps and repairing cords other trades ran over is a real crew on a real payroll with nowhere to bill. The rough in is also the most exposed work in the wall, thin wall conduit and MC that other trades hang from, drill through, and stand on, and the damage surfaces at trim when no one can be charged for it.
The size of it
You absorb two to four unpriced remobilizations at $3k to $8k each, a temp power scope bid for 14 months that runs 22, and repair labor that's pure loss. On a mid size commercial job that's $25k to $60k off the bottom line, spread thin enough that no single week ever looks wrong.
Nobody pays for the repairs because nobody was ever asked to, and the ask has to be in the schedule of values before the damage happens. The sequence runs temp power, underground, rough in, trim, gear and terminations, startup, and punch. Each one is a discrete trip with its own lift rental, tool haul, and foreman ramp. In between, drywall screws find MC cable, HVAC hangers crush conduit, and somebody cuts a home run, and you discover it weeks later with no witness and no ticket, so it repairs on your dime. When the GC compresses the schedule the trades stack, the damage rate climbs, and your remaining trips collapse into overtime.
Three moves, in order
Step 08: Standards and accountability
Five hours a month of owner time, spent ahead of the work.
What else costs electrical contractors money
The same mechanism in other trades
What electrical owners ask
Other trades keep damaging my rough in and nobody will pay for the repairs?
Electrical returns to the same building four to six times, and the rough in sits exposed between trips. Temp power gets bid as one lump sum before anyone knows the duration.
What does it cost?
You absorb two to four unpriced remobilizations at $3k to $8k each, a temp power scope bid for 14 months that runs 22, and repair labor that's pure loss. On a mid size commercial job that's $25k to $60k off the bottom line, spread thin enough that no single week ever looks wrong.
What do I do first?
Break the schedule of values into a line per mobilization: temp power, underground, rough in, trim, gear, startup, and punch, so trip number five has somewhere to bill.
What are electrical contractors supposed to be making?
Electrical runs 25% gross margin, 16% overhead and 9% net profit before taxes at $1M–$5M. The all-trade average is 7%, so this trade sits 2 points above it. The CFOS target is 11%.
Which part of the system fixes it?
The step is number 08, standards and accountability. Five hours a month of owner time, spent ahead of the work. It comes from chapter 8 of CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System.
Josh Luebker ran commercial construction projects before he ran the numbers behind them, on data centres, military bases, hospitals, and high-rises. He wrote CONTROL: The Construction Financial Operating System, which is an eight-step framework for commercial subcontractors, and it publishes on October 1, 2026. He is a master electrician who moved into the office and kept the field vocabulary.
Sulphur Prairie Operations LLC maintains the benchmark reference behind these figures. Every edition is reconciled against the newest CFMA survey release before it publishes here. Where a figure changes between editions, the older edition keeps its year in the title so a citation to it stays correct.